Dragonflies, Christmas Trees And The Handmade Fair

Last weekend I headed off to London so that I could go to Kirstie Allsopp’s The Handmade Fair at Hampton Court with my sister and her fiance. Honestly, I am not a crafty person whatsoever but I had been really excited about this for months and months.

The Handmade Fair is an outdoor event so with it being in the middle of September, we were expecting the worst. There are various sessions you can attend throughout the day but you need tickets for each. You can either book these at the time of buying your ticket or you can hope for the best and buy tickets for sessions on the day. We tried to get some extra tickets when we arrived but a lot of the sessions were already sold out.

Our first session was Kirstie cooks with Angela Malik in the Super Theatre from 11-1145. I was really glad we got to go to something with Kirstie herself as she only does a couple of sessions each day. The whole sessions was great fun and we laughed the whole way through. Kirstie and Angela Malik talked about Indian cooking and also did some live demonstrations.

We had quite a bit of time free between the end of our first sessions and our next which was at 2pm. The Handmade Fair has loads of food trucks and two massive shopping tents, as well as smaller tents offering live demos and trial sessions, such as pottery. We spend quite a lot of time looking around the stalls. There was so much choice and something for everyone! I wanted to have a good look around before I decided on what to buy.

For lunch, I went for a stonebaked pizza which only took 90 seconds! It was delicious. At £9, the price wasn’t completely unreasonable and it was really nice. A bit later in the day I also had a pot of 6 churros with melted Belgian chocolate and these only cost £4. There are loads of different priced foods but drinks are all quite expensive so I wish I’d have taken something in with me.

Our next session from 2-230 was to make a Wirework Dragonfly. I honestly thought mine would be terrible and I had a bit of competition with my sister to see whose would be the best! The session was really well led and the instructions were lovely and easy, making it possible for absolute beginners like me to follow. I couldn’t believe it when mine actually came out really nice. I was really quite proud of myself. Even more so, I was surprised at how much fun I had.

In our break before our next session we went back into the shopping areas to buy some clothes for Erin. I had wanted to walk around a lot first before choosing some clothes. I couldn’t afford loads so I had to be quite picky. I am so happy with what I got though!

From 4-5pm we had a session in the Winter Theme Skills Workshop doing Folk Art Winter Wonderland. For this we were learning how to paint and I honestly cannot believe how serious it was! Certain paint brushes to be used in certain ways and we learned how to do only 1 paint stroke! This by far our worst session of the day but mainly because we just didn’t get it at all! It took us so long to go from blobs of paint to something that actually looked like the Christmas tree we were supposed to have.

By the time we had finished out last session we were all exhausted and ready for home! I had such a fantastic day and I would definitely go back next year and maybe do a couple of extra sessions instead of having as much free time as we had.